This invention generally relates to a method and system of information delivery, and more specifically relates to a method, product, and apparatus for processing reusable information.
In exchange for disclosure of an invention, the issuance of a U.S. patent is a twenty year grant from the time filed by the government of a property right to the inventor to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention"", with the patentee losing rights to the invention upon expiration. Title 37 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Section 1.362(d) provides that maintenance fees may be paid without surcharge for the six-month period beginning three, seven, and eleven years after the date of issue of patents based on applications filed on or after Dec. 12, 1980. An additional six-month grace period is provided by 35 U.S.C. 41(b) and 37 CFR 1.362(e) for payment of the maintenance fee with the surcharge set forth in 37 CFR 1.20(h), as amended effective Dec. 16, 1991. If the maintenance fee is not paid in the patent requiring such payment the patent will expire on the fourth, eighth, or twelfth anniversary of the grant. Eleven years since the first premature patent expiration in December 1985, over 275,000 patents have prematurely expired and entered the public domain with additional 1,000 patents prematurely expiring each week.
A common use of patent information and an early step in assessing the patentability of an invention is to perform prior art searches of existing patents. To assist patent examiners, the Automated Patent System (APS) was implemented in April of 1984 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) with over 400 million dollars of taxpayer money to provide sophisticated centralized on-line search capabilities. By accessing the APS database from a computer, an examiner can select patents for review based on the occurrence of specified words or phases, in particular combinations, in the document. The U.S. Congress has long recognized the importance of information dissemination to the PTO""s mission. The PTO enabling legislation has several sections addressing information dissemination; the most relevant of these being the requirements that the PTO provide the public with direct access to its search systems. Consequently, the APS database has been available to the public in the PTO Public Search Room since 1990 and, initially on an experimental basis, in 14 of the 74 Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries since 1992.
U.S. patents offered by commercial data vendors is based on data furnished by the PTO. At present, the most prevalent mode of transferring data to the vendor community from the PTO is in the form of files on magnetic tape. For example, the PTO offers copies of the tapes that contain the text used as input in the building of the APS database. The premature expiration of a patent has never been a search requirement for the patent examiner. As a result, there has been no need for the PTO to incorporate this new reference information into the APS database. Currently, the APS database is the representation of the original library files of patent text data at the time of issuance and does not provide a data field for the premature expiration status of a patent. Though this is the primary source of data provided for sale by the PTO, commercial data vendors in turn have not recognized the potentially unrealized value of premature expiration information.
It is government""s responsibility to publish what the public can not make, use, or sell. Aside from disclosure of the full patent document, the government also publishes the front-page information of the patent document in the Official Gazette. The following is from Chapter 2575 of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) Sixth Edition, Revision 1, September 1995.
A notice will appear in each issue of the Official Gazette which will indicate which patents have been granted 3, 7, and 11 years earlier, that the window period has opened, and that maintenance fee payments will now be accepted for those patents. Another Official Gazette notice published after expiration of the grace period will indicate any patent that has prematurely expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees and any patents that have been reinstated. An annual compilation of such expirations and reinstatements will also be published.
This passage denotes the intention of government to publish what the public can make, use, or sell. All patents prior to December 1985 expire seventeen years after being granted. For example, if it is the first week of the year 1996 and the public wanted to read what patents had just expired, one would look at the Official Gazette from the first week of 1979. Essentially a book published seventeen years ago would be retrieved. For the first 195 years of the U.S. Patent System, there was no need to republish or compile expired patent information because it was previously published by default.
On Dec. 10, 1985, nearly 200 years since the first patent issued, the Official Gazette (OG) Notice had listed U.S. Pat. No. 4,291,808 to become the first patent ever to prematurely expire for failure to pay maintenance fees. Since then, the PTO has published weekly in the OG notices the patent numbers of the expiring patents. The release of the patent numbers only, limits the public to a manual, exhaustive, and inefficient cross-referenced retrieval of the newest patent documents that have prematurely expired, thereby creating for the first time a new need to compile this information. In 1987, the PTO released a series of CD-ROM subscription products including the Classification and Search Support Information System Bibliographic disc (CASSIS-BIB). This disc offers the search and retrieval of title-only patent information dating back to 1969. The subscriber can search for the status of a patent (withdrawn, reinstated, abandoned, or prematurely expired) and view the most current list of premature expired patents. Although the release of the CASSIS-BIB disc can help with the search of patent expirations and allows the subscriber the privacy and cost benefits of such a system, searching is limited to patent titles only, the disc is updated every two months and is not cost effective to update more frequently.
Because of significant changes in technology, revisions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, and the passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-13), public access has further expanded through a variety of programs administered by the PTO""s Office of Information Dissemination to include the access of patent and trademark information made available via the Internet and PTO Bulletin Board System (PTO-BBS). Upon browsing Internet sites, patent servers at the Center for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR), Community of Science, Chemical Abstracts Society (CAS), and IBM to name a few,. have all neglected to allow searching for the expiration status of a patent. The IBM Patent Server has come closest to this accomplishment where on Jun. 4, 1997, a maintenance. status field was integrated into the database which lists the status of a patent upon retrieval only, and is not yet a searchable field.
In November of 1994 the PTO established an on-line BBS. The PTO began to list exclusive files of premature expired patent numbers weekly and list master files of premature expired patent numbers every two months. The patent numbers are published in natural ascending order, and for more than ten years have been keyed in manually by the PTO. As a result, it is not uncommon to see occasional errors like the reversal of digits within the patent number based on an operator""s manual entry. In 1995, the PTO added the release of the OG Notices on-line. In the OG Notice on Feb. 6, 1996, the PTO published the premature expired patent numbers for the week of Feb. 13, 1996 instead of the current week. On Mar. 12, 1996 the OG corrected the omission while the PTO-BBS did not. Since then, the exclusive files have been reported one week ahead of the OG Notices upon issue. The master list of premature expired patent numbers released on the PTO-BBS for Dec. 31, 1996 omitted about 6,000 premature expired patent numbers. This omission represents the eight and twelve year expirations since the previous master list on Oct. 31, 1996. This omission is in turn reflected in the December 1996 issue of the CASSIS-BIB CD-ROM.
There were further omissions in the February 1997 issue and the CASSIS-BIB subscription disc does not remain corrected to this date. In May 1997, the PTO-BBS shut down due to a diminished user base and the increasing popularity of the Internet. The above inconsistencies indicate that there is no system for detecting error or omission that may be subject to manual labor or clerical errors. The issuance of the premature expired patent numbers by the PTO has now become questionable in regard to method, policy, and accuracy of its use.
As previously discussed in co-pending patent application Ser. No. 08/900,437 filed Jul. 25, 1997 now U.S. Pat No. 5,987,464 the applications of information delivery and updating extend far beyond the field of patent information. For instance, new information generated from the renewed availability of old information is also applicable to any forfeited property (real or intellectual) including real estate, trademarks, copyrights, domain names, and telephone numbers too name a few.
Name space is a set of names in which all names are unique. Address space is a set of addresses in which all addresses are unique. Names are commonly used as mnemonic devices to help remember information. For instance, names are used to remember telephone numbers, and domain names are used to remember Internet addresses.
Currently, national phone numbers take the form of an international dialing code, area code, prefix, and number (e.g. 1-212-555-1212). During the turn of the century, phone companies built xe2x80x9cexchangesxe2x80x9d known as Central Offices to serve a certain geographical area. The exchange was named after the first prefix installed in that office. Before phones had dials on them, an operator connected the caller""s request to the name of the exchange and number, such as Spring 3456 or Pennsylvania 5000. In the late 1920""s, once dials started appearing on phones, a caller could connect the phone number by first dialing the first three letters of the exchange and then the number. For example, the caller would dial the S-P-R in Spring and then the 3456 or the P-E-N in Pennsylvania 5000. Back then, phone numbers were written with the dialed letters capitalized such as SPRing 3456 and PENnsylvania 5000, as a mnemonic device.
By the 1930s, large cities were dropping the third letter from the dialing routine and replacing it with a number, in order to increase the available numbers for each exchange. So numbers such as SPRing 3456 would become SPring2-3456 and PENnsylvania 5000 would become PEnnsylvania6-5000. This simple change added 80,000 new numbers to existing exchanges. Exchange names helped foster a sense of place, and community, in the same way that cities do. For over 30 years exchange names were published in phone directories and had become common use worldwide.
As is known in the art, telephone calls are routed from a calling Subscriber to a called Subscriber through a network of switches. Subscribers connected to a common switch, are assigned a unique directory number, NXX-XXXX, where xe2x80x9cNxe2x80x9d refers to any digit except 0 or 1 and xe2x80x9cXxe2x80x9d refers to any one of 10 digits. As is also known in the art, the telephone system divides the United States into xe2x80x9carea codesxe2x80x9d; more technically referred to as Numbering Plan Area (NPA) codes. When a call is made from one xe2x80x9carea codexe2x80x9d to another xe2x80x9carea codexe2x80x9d, the three digit Numbering Plan Area code, NPA, prefix must be supplied to the called Subscriber""s directory number (DN). Thus, in effect, each telephone Subscriber is associated with a unique ten digit directory number; NPA-NXX-XXXX.
By the early 1960""s, area codes were being used up faster than was predicted in 1947 when the area code scheme was finalized as part of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). As a result, exchange names were continually being reassigned causing confusion and aggravation in communities throughout major cities in the country. During the early 1970""s, as exchange names were phased out and 1-800 toll free numbers introduced, industry recognized and extended the use of mnemonics for commercial advertising and name branding. During the 1980""s, 1-800 names were popularized to the point where brokers would buy names with the hope of selling or leasing the 1-800 names from their growing portfolio. In fact, courts have almost unanimously held that telephone mnemonics may be protected as trademarks. In recent years, the shortage of seven letter names used as a mnemonic device led to the strategy for obtaining telephone numbers that correspond to eight and nine letter names. In recent years, two new toll free exchanges (1-888, 1-877) were added because of the saturation of 1-800 numbers. Exchange names are but one example of name space. A recent area of worldwide concern is the allocation of name space on the Internet.
The Internet is a vast computer network having many smaller networks that span the entire world. A Network is a distributed communicating system of computers that are interconnected by various electronic communication links and computer software protocols. Because of the Internet""s distributed and open network architecture, it is possible to transfer data from one computer to any other computer world wide. In 1991, the World-Wide Web (Web or WWW), revolutionized the way information is managed and distributed through the Internet.
The Web is based on the concept of hypertext and a transfer method known as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is designed to run primarily over a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connection that employs a standard Internet setup. A server computer may provide the data and a client computer may display or process it. TCP may then convert messages into streams of packets at the source, then reassembles them back into messages at the destination. Internet Protocol (IP) handles the addressing, seeing to it that packets are routed across multiple nodes and even across multiple networks with multiple standards. HTTP protocol permits client systems connected to the Internet to access independent and geographically scattered server systems also connected to the Internet. Client side browsers, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer provide efficient graphical user interface (GUI) based client applications that implement the client side portion of the HTTP protocol. One format for information transfer is to create documents using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML pages are made up of standard text as well as formatting codes that indicate how the page should be displayed. The client side browser reads these codes in order to display the page.
A web page is static when it requires no variables to display information or link to other predetermined web pages. A web page is dynamic when arguments are passed which are either hidden in the web page or entered from the client browser to supply the necessary inputs displayed on the web page. Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard for running external programs from a web server. CGI specifies how to pass arguments to the executing program as part of the HTTP server request. Commonly, a CGI script can take the name and value arguments from an input form of a first web page which is be used as a query to access a database server and generate an HTML web page with customized data results as output that is passed back to the client browser for display.
The Web is a method of accessing information on the Internet that allows a user to xe2x80x9csurf the webxe2x80x9d and navigate the Internet resources intuitively, without technical knowledge. The Web dispenses with command-line utilities, which typically require a user to transmit sets of commands to communicate with an Internet server. Instead, the Web is made up of millions of interconnected web pages, or documents, which can be displayed on a computer monitor. Hosts running special servers provide the Web pages. Software that runs these Web servers is relatively simple and is available on a wide range of computer platforms including PC""s. Equally available is a form of client software, known as a Web browser, which is used to display Web pages as well as traditional non-Web files on the client system.
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URl) is a compact string of characters for identifying an abstract or physical resource. URls, is the generic set of all names and addresses that refer to objects on the Internet. URls that refer to objects accessed with existing protocols are known as URLs. A URL is the address of a file accessible on the Internet. The URL contains the name of the protocol required to access the resource, a domain name or IP address that identifies a specific computer on the Internet, and a hierarchical description of a file location on the computer. For example the URL xe2x80x9chttp://www.example.com/index.htmlxe2x80x9d, where xe2x80x9chttp:xe2x80x9d is the scheme or protocol, xe2x80x9c//www.example.comxe2x80x9d is the fully qualified domain name FQDN), and xe2x80x9c/index.htmlxe2x80x9d is the filename located on the server.
Because an Internet address is a relatively long string of numbers (e.g., 31.41.59.26) that is difficult to remember, Internet users rely on domain names, memorable and sometimes catchy words corresponding to these numbers, in order to use electronic mail (e-mail) and to connect to Internet sites on the Web. The Domain Name System (DNS) is a set of protocols and services on a network that allows users to utilize domain names when looking for other hosts (e.g. computers) on the network. DNS is composed of a distributed database of names. The names in the DNS database establish a logical tree structure called the domain name space. Each node or domain in the domain name space is named and can contain subdomains. Domains and subdomains are grouped into zones to allow for distributed administration of the name space.
A domain name includes two parts: a host and a domain. Technically, the letters to the right of the xe2x80x9cdotxe2x80x9d (e.g., unames.com) are referred to as Top Level Domains (TLDs), while hosts, computers with assigned IP addresses that are listed in specific TLD registries are known as second-level domains (SLDs). For the domain name xe2x80x9cunames.comxe2x80x9d; xe2x80x9c.comxe2x80x9d is the TLD and xe2x80x9cunamesxe2x80x9d is the SLD. Domain name space is the ordered hierarchical set of all possible domain names either in use or to be used for locating an IP address on the Internet. TLDs are known as top-level domains because they comprise the highest-order name space available on the Internet. Second-level domains, as well as third-level domains (3LDs) such as xe2x80x9cmy.unames.comxe2x80x9d, are subsidiary to TLDs in the hierarchy of the Internet""s DNS. There are two types of top-level domains, generic and country code.
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) were created to allocate resources to the growing community of institutional networks, while country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) were created for use by each individual country, as deemed necessary. More than 200 national, or country-code TLDs. (e.g. United States (.us), Japan (.jp), Germany (.de) etc.) are administered by their corresponding governments or by private entities with the appropriate national government""s acquiescence. A small set of gTLDs does not carry any national identifier, but denote the intended function of that portion of the domain space. For example, xe2x80x9c.comxe2x80x9d was established for commercial networks, xe2x80x9c.orgxe2x80x9d for not-for-profit organizations, and xe2x80x9c.netxe2x80x9d for network gateways. The set of gTLDs was established early in the history of the DNS and has not been changed or augmented in recent years (COM, ORG, GOV, and MIL were created by January 1985, NET in July 1985, and INT was added in November 1988).
The DNS is operated by a Network Information Center (NIC) in each country to act as authority for administering the respective ccTLD zone file portion of the DNS database. The Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC), which administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was formed to preside as authority over the gTLD zone files. In 1993, InterNIC was privatized and Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) perform the registration and propagation of these key gTLDs, under a five-year cooperative agreement with the NSF. This agreement now extended to March 2000 was to have originally expired March 1998.
Beginning Sep. 14, 1995, the Cooperative Agreement directed the Registrar to require direct payment from domain name applicants/registrants for registration and renewal re-registration) of the domain names at the second level of the five listed top-level domains. New registrations are in effect for a two-year period. Near the end of the initial two-year registration period, and every year thereafter, a Registrar will send an invoice to re-register the domain name. Therefore the date of the first domain name to ever become newly available to the public due to failure to pay a renewal fee was in September 1997. However, co-pending patent application Ser. No. 08/900,437 filed Jul. 25, 1997 states that delivery and updating methods are applicable to the renewed availability of domain name related information solving a need two months before the need became evident.
Domain name registration for a given NIC authority can be accessed by a TCP/IP application called WHOIS, which queries a NIC database to find the registration date, the name of network and system administrators, system and network points-of-contact, and other individuals who are registered in appropriate databases. Domain names are identifiers used for both accessing a resource and retrieving contact information of the registrant or domain name holder of that resource. The availability of a domain name from a NIC authority for a given TLD is determined by submitting a WHOIS request. If there are no matches in the database then the domain name is available for registration. Because the WHOIS database is centralized rather than distributed, the DNS supports only resolution services rather than directory or registration services. Resource location is determined by resolving a query in the DNS and domain name availability is determined by using a WHOIS service to query an appropriate NIC database.
WHOIS database is a centralized sole-source of data collected by NSI under government contract. Though the WHOIS database is a collection of facts and therefore can not be copyrighted. NSI has been claiming WHOIS database ownership based on the labor of collection/compilation of xe2x80x9ccustomer dataxe2x80x9d. On Sep. 29, 1999 an on-line Wired News article reports that xe2x80x9cparties charged with overseeing the Internet""s DNS have reached a truce that extends NSI domain database ownership, albeit with significant concessions. NSI emerged with continued jurisdiction over WHOIS, the mother of all Internet databases, which lists all .com, .net and .org domain information: The agreement also extended NSI""s dominion over WHOIS for an additional four years.xe2x80x9d On Jan. 21, 1999 an on-line CNET News article reports, xe2x80x9cSince the beginning of the year, an unprecedented number of people have been flooding NSI with requests for popular domain names that are on hold. These so-called speculators hope that by automatically requesting a popular site every few seconds, there is a better chance of obtaining it once it opensxe2x80x9d, also quoted in the article from a NSI spokesperson, xe2x80x9cThere does not seem to be any reason why third parties need to know the anniversary date or status of domain names for which they have no association and, if they do feel they need this information, they could contact the registrant to request this informationxe2x80x9d. On Jan. 19, 1999 another on-line CNET News article reports, xe2x80x9cIn an apparent attempt to combat the speculators, NSI today stopped disclosing in its WHOIS database whether domain names are on hold or when the address was originally registered. NSI deems a site on hold when it has been suspended for any number of reasons, such as nonpayment of fees. The informationxe2x80x94which, until today, had been a part of the database for yearsxe2x80x94makes it easier for people to guess when a popular site that is on holdxe2x80x94for example e-shopping.comxe2x80x94will become availablexe2x80x9d.
It is apparent from these news articles that there is an ongoing struggle for control and ownership of the WHOIS database. Tactics have been used to suppress the domain name registration date from the results of a WHOIS query or control the distribution of the TLD zone files, which is critically relied on by all devices connected to the Internet for the purpose of name resolution. Certainly, at a minimum the domain name and registration date, is not xe2x80x9ccustomer dataxe2x80x9d and is considered fact that the public should have access to. These measures are an attempt to inhibit the public from re-registering domain names that are newly available and fall back into the public domain.
This analogy can be extended to the field of telephone numbers. When a subscriber or provider terminates service of a telephone number, the telephone number is held ninety days for residents and one year for businesses before released and made available to other subscribers. During this pending time, a subscriber may renew service so it is unclear as to what telephone numbers are inevitably available on the given telephone number release date. Telephone number availability has remained to this day transparent and unquestioned by the public. It is the public""s right to know both what is and what is not available property in order to make an informed decision. As previously discussed in co-pending patent application Ser. No. 08/900,437 filed Jul. 25, 1997 now U.S Pat. No. 5,987,464 use is made from the knowledge of what patent maintenance fees are paid in advance. Further applications of using information before it is known what information is newly available will be further discussed in this present invention.
The conditions of centralization first mentioned have allowed for industry to overlook novel solutions for the dissemination of newly available information. Accordingly, in light of the above, there is a strong need in the art for a novel system and method for updating information/reference files of a computer and/or computer system without putting the onus of updating on the subscriber so that an information program stored thereon is kept current. Moreover, there is a strong need to improve a system and method to optimize the search, retrieval, reporting, delivery, and update of master database information and newly available information for both on-line/off-line and centralized/distributed systems.
The present invention in particular relates to a system and method for updating patent files of a computer and/or computer system so that the patent files include newly issued patents and premature expired ones. However, as discussed below, the present invention has applicability to updating a variety of types of reference data files of a computer and/or computer system without putting the onus of updating on the subscriber.
Briefly, the present invention provides a portable storage media such as a floppy disk, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM that is being used to install a program, reference. data files or other data to a computer or computer system. At subsequent intervals, new issue data, news and advertising data, renewal and reinstatement data, and control/reference data are also provided to the computer or computer system. The control/reference data being downloaded is a representation of the most recently available data references. The computer or computer system receiving the files creates a subset of reference data files to be queried, browsed, searched, selected, reported, archived, ordered, or hyperlinked. Thus, according to the present invention, a computer system""s information reference data files are automatically updated and indexed with the installation of new data and/or programs.
There are many types of information delivery programs that the present invention will benefit. For example, there are newly issued and premature expired patent and trademark providing programs, and job and housing availability programs to name a few. The aforementioned updating problem is prevalent in all areas where particular software utilizes reference files that need to be updated frequently in order for the system using the software to operate optimally. As mentioned above, the present invention can be utilized to update any suitable reference files of a computer and/or computer system without putting the onus of updating on the user.
The present invention optimizes the on-line transmission size of time sensitive-information to a subscriber. The invention utilizes renewal information and previous expiration information to increase the subscription period. The present invention minimizes the use of using portable storage media by buffering or caching data to be used in the near future. The invention offers an automated clipping service to encourage the potential use and easier access of information to the public.
The present invention offers an automated preview service that utilizes the time delay between receiving control/reference data for building newly available information and receiving newly issued information. The invention reduces the search and retrieval time for accessing master database information and newly available information. The present invention also implements methods of verification to assure the accuracy and reliability of newly available information. The invention streamlines the document delivery process by accessing document images off-line. The invention maintains privacy of a subscriber""s query off-line and when possible limits on-line to retrieval only, of for querying non-semantic or keyword search strategies, such as but not limited to classification and cross-reference searching.
The present invention uses Service Providers (SPs) for tiered subscribing to act as a proxy on behalf of their clients (other subscribers) allowing for less distribution costs, reduced network bandwidth from data queries and updates, and privacy to the end user when querying and accessing data while the invention remains ubiquitous but yet transparent to the end-user. The invention allows for small portions or recursively smaller portions of large databases (compiled or distributed) to be updated by sending both a query and encoded bit mask for determining a query subset that is compiled and constitutes new use.
According to one particular aspect of the present invention, a method for creating data files of a computer system is provided including the steps of: storing first data on a storage medium of the computer system, the first data including an executable program and data files; subsequently storing second data on the storage medium of the computer system; and using the second data to create third data on the storage medium, wherein the third data is an updated subset of the data files.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, a computer system is provided including: at least one computer; and a storage medium coupleable to the at least one computer, the storage medium adapted to deliver data to the at least one computer, the storage medium including first and second data; wherein the first data includes an executable program and data files, the second data is used to create third data on the storage medium, the third data being an updated subset of the data files.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, a method for creating data files of a computer system is provided including the steps of: storing first data on a storage medium of the computer system, the first data including an executable program and data files, the data files including potentially reusable data; subsequently storing second data on the storage medium of the computer system, the second data including data that corresponds to a subset of records of the data files; and executing the program for combining the second data with the data files to create third data on the storage medium, the third data including newly indexed available information, wherein the third data is an updated subset of the data files.